Give Me a Break

It’s a hotel right on the beach, where everything smells like sea salt and the air’s crisp and clean. It’s a hotel where the walls are white with intricate details hand painted, not air brushed, onto the edges and the borders made of real mahogany. It’s a hotel next to another hotel, rivaling it in grandeur and elegance and beauty. It’s pretty and it’s perfect and you can tell by Brendon’s quick glances at me before he twists away sharply to pretend he’s admiring the fish tank behind the registration desk or the crystal chandeliers, you can tell he’s hoping I like it.

And I should. I’m not an ass enough to not realize I should be hugging and thanking Brendon for everything. None of my money’s in this adventure, not a drop of the money I earn at the record studio back in Chicago is flowing through my credit card to pay for the airplane or the hotel or the snorkeling excursion Brendon keeps talking about. The bank account I started with will be the same I leave with. Brendon’s is losing a chunk and heget the same paycheck as me. It’s a fair amount, but not enough for these type of things to be common place. I should be happy.

I was never very good with doing what people told me to do.

The upside? Jon’s staying in a hotel down the beach. Invited us to dinner. I’m not in the mood to make friends, but he doesn’t push like Brendon, doesn’t beg me to talk. He accepts my silence, listened to my iPod with me until we hit baggage claim while he chatted with Brendon. Leaves me alone and keeps Brendon distracted. I have no objections with Mr. Walker. At least not right now.

Brendon checks us in and skips off to the elevator, smiling, bouncing, hyped up on energy even though we flew in too late to go down to the beach. The sun’s setting along the water, casting orange and purple fingers out across the sky, leaving diamonds bouncing off the waves cascading down the shore line and I lean against our balcony door, watch the beauty. I don’t feel happy, but I’m content and it sure as hell isn’t Chicago. The air doesn’t run rampant with the smell of steel and metal. Every image doesn’t remind me of Spencer and the things I never said and should have. My suitcase is spread eagle on the bed I claimed after coming up, closest to the door, closest to escape, and there’s already shirts placed in piles next to it, neat, organized. I’ll never be messy again. Last time I left my things on the floor, it....

I turn away from the bag and look back out the window. There’s no need to focus on it. I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t my fault. I know it’s a lie, but maybe the ocean air can swallow up my inhibitions. Maybe I do need Hawaii. Brendon squeals from the bathroom.

“Oh my god! The sink’s shaped like a sea shell!”

No one would be able to prove I tossed him off the balcony.

“Hey, Ryan! Do you want the shower first?”

I can already hear the water running down, pounding against the edges of the tub. I crack open the sliding glass door and step out to the balcony, wind smaking against my face. The salt coats my mouth and nose, fills my senses, buries itself in the pores of my bare arms. Eyes closed and breaths deep, I lean against the metal railing, the bolts holding strong and a tension passes through my shoulders, eases out the muscles there.

“Ryan?”

“Go ahead..” I call over my shoulder, eyes still clamped shut against the world.

I don’t want to be in Chicago, but I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be with Brendon, but really, if I’m honest about it, I don’t want to be alone. I want Spencer. I want the boy I grew up with, laughed with, talked about family and school and girls with. I don’t want the stinking memories of a funeral that should never have happened. It was sunny, the air perfumed with the flowers rotting in the heat. Funerals shouldn’t happen in bright sunlight. The weather mocks you, pokes fun at your misery with a glare that blinds and a burn that forms red blotches along your face. The sun’s collapsing into the ocean here, but I know it’ll be scalding hot in the morning. Just like that day. Hot and melting, everything oxidizing and decomposing.

So much for relaxing on a tropical island.

Halfway on my way to the lobbey, I begin to wonder if I shut the door.

I don’t head to the beach. It seems cliche and it’s too tempting to jump in and not get out, float off and hope for a shark to smell me. So I walk into town, taking back streets, trying to get lost. It’s a waste of time. Our hotel’s the tallest building around. Amongst all the two and one story residential homes, it looms in the sky like a mountain, crushing down on the people who actually live here. I don’t understand how they can stand that. The constant flow of tourists who don’t love this island, don’t respect it, don’t care about it, it’d make me sick.

“You look lost.”

One day, honestly, you’ll see, one day, that smell of coffee won’t hit me before I see him. Jon walks up to me, a smile curling the edges of his lips, a constant with him apparently. A loose shirt is drapped over his chest and the flip flops seem more at place in this setting, more believable. In one hand, he’s got a kabob, the meat and veggies still steaming. In the other, half a coconut filled with shaved ice. The cliche sends a pang through my neck.

“That’s the point.” I monotone and Jon chuckles, takes a long sip from his coconut, the ice going pale where the flavor drains from it.

“You’re in the right place to get lost then. There’s a awesome fish taco shop down the street. Have you eaten yet?”

I stumble over the invite, remember he invited us to dinner earlier. No, I’m not hungry. Actually, yes, I’m starving. Throwing up on the plane drained me of any food. But I wanted to get lost. Not hunted down by Jon who seems to have a GPS on my ass. The steam spirals rising from his kabob hit my nose and it might as well be an order. There’s no chance of me not eating something if I linger by this smell. But I’d still rather be alone.

“No, but I can handle it. Thanks.”

I take a step and Jon grabs my arm, the kabob falling to the floor. I blink at him.

“Wha-?”

“Aw, come on. You’re hungry and by the look of you, upset. Let me buy you some dinner. I won’t make you go back to the hotel and Brendon. Scouts honor.” He holds up the Boy Scouts promise and I bite my lip. I don’t want to make friends.

“Can’t you take a hint?” I growl.

“Not really.” He smiles again and runs a hand through his hair, pushing the loose strands from his face. “Is that a yes?”

“Why do you care if I starve or not?”

“Come on, Ryan. Hasn’t anyone ever just looked after you?”

“I met you a few hours ago.”

“That’s a no isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Brendon doesn’t count?”

I glare at him, my jaw clenched so tight I can almost hear the teeth shattering behind my lips. No, he doesn’t count. He’s my friend. He’s my coworker. He’s only doing what he’s supposed to do, what everyone’s been telling him to do. What Pete begged him to do when I stopped going to work. What he thinks Spencer would have done. Everyone trying to make up for who Spencer was, what he was to me. Brendon doesn’t count.

“No. Leave me alone.”

I hurry away, steps determined and focused. Friends die. Friends leave. I don’t need anymore. Maybe if I’m alone, it won’t hurt anymore. I take a right down a dark street and run into a stream at the end, strong, swift, moving quickly with the leaves speckling it’s surface glowing in the light of torches burning at the banks. Across the water, in the back yard of a home, people are dancing and laughing, twirling around a fire pit surrounded by marshmallows and a bar-b-q roasting meat I can smell from here.

I take off my shoes and lower my feet into the stream, the pale skin glowing in the moonlight. Lying on my back, I can see the stars, more than I’ve ever seen in Chicago. Spencer always said the stars were half the reason he liked to stay up late. Said it reminded him that there was something bigger outside of the little dramas of his day to day. I close my eyes, the thoughts stinging and scathing at a heart still broken and cracked.

I don’t want to go home and I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be anywhere I guess. Maybe I don’t belong anywhere. Even paradise doesn’t welcome me. Even in paradise I can feel the memories digging deeper under my skin, poking holes through my arms and my resolve, shattering my bones and my beliefs that it wasn’t my fault. I try to breathe and can’t, the air caught in a knot between my air pipe and my lungs, the force too much. I cough and roll onto my side, praying a new position will change what happened. Knowing it won’t.

I fall asleep like that, wishing I could change what I did. I dream of broken bones and falls that go on forever. Alice dropping down the rabbit hole. But it’s really Spencer falling down the stairs, crashing along the angles and the edges. Breaking over curves in all the truths I bent to convince us he was fine. Breaking over everything. Breaking. Breaking.

Dead.